The Italian law provides for a new tax amortisation advantage aiming at supporting the current trend of automation and data exchange in the Industry 4.0 or Industrial Internet of Things.

In case of new high technological assets identified as "Industry 4.0" the total amortisation effect is of 250%.This increase of 150% of the purchase sale (named “iperammortamento“) affects the amortisation deduction from a tax point of view (while again in the balance sheet the new assets are booked at their historical values).

The “iperammortamento” applies only to purchases performed from the 1st of January 2017 to the end of 2017 and therefore companies shall hurry up to carry out such investments.

If the purchase price of each asset is higher than € 500,000, a technical evaluation conducted by an engineer or an industrial expert that shall provide that:

the assets are eligible for the tax amortisation benefit since they are included in the annexes "Industry 4.0";

the assets are “interconnected” to the production management system or to the supply chain.

The “interconnection” of the Industrial Internet of Things good with the production management system or the supply chain referred above is meant to happen, according to the MISE Guidelines, is considered present when:

there is an exchange of information with internal and external systems through a link based on documented specifications;

the asset is univocally identified in order to recognize the source of information through for instance the IP address.